Christmas, Elevators, and Fate
by hallow777
Summary: It's Christmas and Castle and Beckett are stuck on an elevator! A Christmas Fanfic Present for caitlind14
1. Chapter 1

**CHRISTMAS TIME! Ahem, sorry about that. I'm really into the Christmas spirit lately for some reason. And because of that, I'm giving the people that ask for them, Fanfiction Christmas presents! All you have to do is send me a message either on here, on tumblr, or a DM on twitter. Telling me what pairing or character you would like me to use and at least some kind of idea for a plot. Even if its just them going to the park or some other random thing. Like the person who requested this one wanted Caskett stuck in an elevator.**

**This one ended up being longer than I had planned so I'm breaking it into two chapters, most other requests will be oneshots. So send me a message and let me know what kind of fic you want for Christmas! (And I will try to have them all done by Christmas.)**

**This one is for caitlind14 from tumblr!**

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It was Christmas afternoon and after spending the morning with her father, Kate Beckett was at her desk in the precinct, filling out left over paperwork from one of their already closed cases.

She wasn't supposed to be at work until tomorrow but the prospect of spending the rest of Christmas alone in her apartment wasn't very appealing. Not that the precinct was much better since most everyone was out spending time with their own families.

Normally she spent all day with her father because they both had Christmas day off, but this year, someone screwed up the schedule and her father had to work.

She had been working on paperwork for a few hours now, judging by the fact that it was already getting dark outside, when a voice spoke up from behind her.

"Beckett! What are you doing here?"

Beckett slowly turned around, trying not to let the fact that he nearly gave her a heart attack show on her face.

"Castle, I work here. What are _you_ doing here?"

He waved off her question and carefully slid the small package he was holding back into his pocket. "But its _Christmas_! Why are you here working?"

"Because I feel like it, okay Castle? Now, either tell me what you are doing here, or leave so I can work on my paperwork in peace."

He raised an eyebrow at her then sat down in his chair, propping his feet up on her desk which she promptly pushed off. "I was just going to leave your present here for you to find when you came into work in the morning, but now I think I will stay a while."

Beckett glanced at him for a minute before shrugging and turning back to her paperwork with him watching her. It only took a few minutes before she slammed her pen down in frustration and glared at him.

"Don't you have anything better to do, Castle? It's Christmas, shouldn't you be spending it with your family? Not watching me do paperwork?"

He just shrugged. "We had our Christmas this morning. Now Mother is off seeing some play with her friends and Alexis is off with Ashley. So no, not really."

"What about Gina?" She tried to avoid the topic of his ex-wife as much as possible, but there was no way around it this time.

"She uh...Er, I'm not exactly her favorite person right now so..."

"What did you do? Miss a deadline?" Beckett couldn't quite hide the smirk on her face as she said that.

"Funny. No, she just can't handle it if all my attention isn't on her and since I've been pretty busy with 'Naked Heat' publicity stuff, she's not very happy with me right now."

She didn't really know what to say to that so she just leaned back in her chair and looked at him for a minute.

"You aren't going to leave until I do, are you?"

"Not a chance."

Knowing that she wouldn't get any paperwork done with him just staring at her the whole time, she decided she might as well go home.

"Fine, I'm leaving, let's go." Beckett scooped up her jacket and pulled her bag from under her desk while Castle pulled on the coat he had taken off earlier.

"Drive me home?" He asked as she picked up her keys and they headed towards the elevator. "I was lucky to get a cab over here in the first place, please?"

Not wanting to argue with him, she agreed and he cheered internally. It was true that he did have a hard time getting a cab to drive him over here, but that wasn't why he wanted her to drive him home.

He hoped that the car ride over there would be enough time to convince her that she should come up and have Christmas dinner with him, since neither of them had any other plans.

Little did he know, 'fate' had other plans for them.

Just a few short minutes later, they were both standing a comfortable distance apart in the elevator heading down to the ground floor when it suddenly started shaking until it came to a stop. They had only been in the elevator mere seconds so they were no where near the ground floor, in fact if he had to guess, he'd say they were somewhere between the third and second floor.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me." Beckett exclaimed before walking over and pushing every button on the console, trying to get a response out of the elevator, with no luck.

Beckett moved back towards the back wall and pulled out her cell phone, happy to see that it still had a signal even though they were in an elevator, and quickly dialed a number while Castle took his turn pushing buttons.

The phone rang a few times before it was finally picked up.

"Maintenance. Gus speaking."

"Gus, I'm stuck in the elevator, come fix it now."

"Ah, Detective Beckett. How nice it is to hear from you again."

"Elevator. Now."

"Sure, sure. I'll be right on it."

She hung up the phone to see Castle staring at her strangely. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just you were kinda abrupt with him..." He moved back to her side and watched as she blew a stray hair out of her eyes before speaking.

"When I first got promoted to Detective, Gus decided it would be fun to tamper with my computer. He made it where it would do odd things when I was using it but when anyone else was around, it would act normal. For weeks he had everyone thinking I was horrible with computers. I still haven't quite forgiven him for that yet."

"Ah..."

They fell into silence for a few minutes before some clanking could be heard then Gus' voice came through the elevator emergency intercom.

"Alright, I'm here. Just give me a minute to see what's wrong and I'll have ya moving in no time."

The intercom clicked off and they could hear some rattling outside the elevator as Gus did his thing. They were silent as Gus worked, just waiting for him to finish so they could be on their way when suddenly the elevator dropped a few feet.

It certainly shocked Beckett, but she quickly shook herself out of it. It seemed Castle wasn't so lucky though. He had completely lost all his color and was as pale as a sheet.

"You okay, Castle?" She moved in front of him to get his attention on her and he slowly looked up from the floor at her and shakily answered her.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine. It just reminded me of the "Medina" case at the museum and that time I thought the elevator was going to fall..." As he talked he seemed to gain a little of his color back and by the time he was through, he was able to give her a small smile. Remembering that case and the 'curse' brought a smile to her face as well.

Then the intercom came back on and Gus said something that immediately wiped the smiles off both their faces.

"I've got some bad news... There is a special cable that's busted. The dang thing is _supposed _to be unbreakable, but apparently not. And since it's not supposed to break, we don't have any spare ones lying around. It's gonna take a while to get a new one, it being Christmas and all."

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**I've wanted an excuse to lock them in an elevator forever and now I finally get to do it! Muhahahahahaha.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Geez, this one about killed me! (Both from how long I spent working on it, and the sheer amount of fluff) I'm sure there are plenty more stories that are fluffier than this, but this is pretty dang fluffy.**

**This one is for caitlind14 from tumblr!**

**I DO NOT OWN CASTLE.**

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"_I've got some bad news... There is a special cable that's busted. The dang thing is supposed to be unbreakable, but apparently not. And since it's not supposed to break, we don't have any spare ones lying around. It's gonna take a while to get a new one, it being Christmas and all."_

"Gus... I swear to god that if this is another one of your tricks, I will kill you and no one will ever be able to find all of you." Beckett stood there glaring at the intercom speaker as if she was glaring at Gus himself.

"N-N-No, it's not me, I swear! I-I-I-I'm going to go try and get a hold of somebody with a cable, I'll let ya know as soon as I hear anything. Bye!" Castle could easily imagine the short man fleeing away from the elevator shaft and after a look at Beckett, wished he could do the same.

She was standing with her feet shoulder width apart, arms crossed over her chest, and a scowl on her face. Classic signs that she was extremely pissed off at someone or something.

Wisely, he decided to let her calm down for a while and took a seat with his back against the back wall of the elevator.

She spent another few minutes just glaring at the intercom before she plopped down a few feet from Castle.

"Bet you regret staying until I left now, don't you?" She spoke up after a few minutes of silence, but was looking ahead and not at him.

"Nah, there are worse people to be trapped in an elevator with." He gave a little half shrug and smiled at her, but his smiled dropped when he noticed she was fidgeting. "Are you okay? I know you don't really want to be in here with me but, it can't be that bad."

"As annoying as you are, it's not that."

"Oh?"

She considered not telling him, but he was looking at her with that curious look he gets and she knew that he would get it out of her one way or another, so she opted to get it over with.

"I just don't...Really like being in small places for long amounts of time..."

It took him a few seconds to realize what she meant but when he did, he broke out into a teasing smile.

"The great Detective Beckett is claustrophobic?"

"Not funny, Castle."

She was getting even more restless and he knew from his past experiences with Alexis, when she was little, that if he didn't distract her, she could end up having a full blown panic attack.

So he started talking. About everything and anything. About Alexis and Ashley. About his mother and how she managed to drive him insane with her off the wall antics. And even about somethings he had planned for Nikki Heat.

He wasn't sure how long they had talked but she had stopped fidgeting, so that was a good sign.

They had just finished discussing how Nikki would go about getting herself free if she was tied up and hanging upside down, when Beckett suddenly remembered something.

"Didn't you say your reason for being here tonight was to leave me a present? Are you going to give it to me, or not?"

"Oh yeah. I was going to give it to you later when we got to my place but, I guess I might as well give it to you now." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small rectangular box and held it out for her to take.

Knowing Castle, it could be anything so she took it with caution and carefully untied the ribbon and opened the lid, half expecting something to jump out of it.

Thankfully, the only thing in the box was a thin, but sturdy looking, silver necklace chain. Beckett carefully lifted the chain out of the box, and held it up with a questioning glance towards Castle.

"It's a chain to keep your mother's ring on. I noticed that you had stopped wearing it and Ryan said that the chain you had it on before, broke during a case during the summer and you nearly lost the ring. I also noticed that you tried wearing it on a different chain a while back but you kept subconsciously checking if it was there, and that's what gave me the idea for your present. I had it custom made out of a lightweight titanium, and then silver plated. So this one is definitely not going to break."

That he cared enough and paid that much attention to her, even while they were dating other people, really pulled at her heart strings. Beckett coughed to clear her suddenly blocked throat and thanked him before reaching into her pocket to pull out the ring.

Lately she had just been leaving it home when she went to work, but today was Christmas and she just couldn't bring herself to leave it at home so she had kept it in her pocket most of the day.

The chain was just long enough so that the ring would hang below most shirt necklines, but short enough so that it wouldn't be able to slip over her head.

Becket picked up the chain and carefully slipped the ring onto it before handing the necklace to Castle, sweeping her hair to one side, and turning her back to him, silently asking him to put it on her.

Not wanting her to change her mind, he quickly scooted closer to her and hung the necklace around her neck, securely clasping it in the back. His fingers lingered on her skin for a few seconds longer than was absolutely necessary, but he pulled them back as soon as she moved to pull her hair back into place.

She turned to place her back against the wall and Castle should have moved back to a respectable distance, but he didn't. Instead he just turned his back to the wall from his position right next to her, leaving barely an inch between them.

Beckett sat there for a good few minutes just fingering the ring and necklace, getting used to it being there again, and testing the strength of the chain. Once she was through with her inspection, where she decided that it was safe enough to wear her ring on it, she spoke up.

"I guess I should have gotten you something too. I didn't think we would be seeing each other today though, so I didn't bother."

"Well, I'll just take the gift of your presence this year." He smiled and she rolled her eyes. "But next year I'll be expecting something good!"

"Oh so you think you'll still be sticking around this time next year?"

"I plan to, did you have something else in mind Detective? Planning some diabolical plot to get rid of me by next year?"

She looked away from him and to a normal person, it would just seem as if she was just looking around the elevator, but he knew her better than that and knew she didn't want to look at him while she spoke again.

"No, I just figured that by this time next year you'd be off to god knows where with Gina."

Normally he would tease her about being jealous but for once in his life, his long buried survival instincts kicked in and he realized he really needed to think about what he said next.

"I'm not leaving again. But who knows, by this time next year you'll be so busy with your life with Josh that you won't even have time to notice little old me."

She hesitated for a second but decided she might as well tell him. "You are a little hard not to notice, Castle."

"Why, thank you."

"But, you aren't going to have to worry about that happening."

Never, even under the threat of death, would she admit just how cute he looked when he was confused.

"I feel like I am missing something here, care to fill me in?"

"Maybe, maybe not." She smirked playfully at him and he started whining, dragging out her name in a horribly high pitched voice.

Seeing that his whining was having no effect, he reached for her but she anticipated that move, and shot to her feet with him following right after her.

She managed to avoid him in the small room for all of five seconds before he had her cornered.

"Now, my dear detective, what aren't you telling me?"

"Whatever do you mean?" She replied innocently, as if she really had no idea what he was talking about.

"Oh, so you want to play it that way, do you?" Eye brow raised, he looked at her for a minute before a maniacal grin spread across his face. "I think I know just how to get you to talk."

"What are you..." Beckett tried to back away, but she was already backed into the corner and had nowhere to go when his fingers descended upon her sides and tickled her mercilessly.

"Castle!...No, stop!" He ignored her pleas until she was red faced and laughing so hard that she couldn't talk anymore. Castle gave her a minute, to catch her breath, while he watched her, thinking how incredibly adorable she looked right now.

"Alright, alright. I'll tell you, happy?" He nodded his head rapidly and she just shook her head at him.

"That won't happen because..." She paused just for dramatic effect. "Because Josh and I broke up two weeks ago."

Because of the fact that it was Christmas, that he had just tickled, tickled! Beckett and came way with all his limbs in tact, and that she was single again, his brain just shut down.

Beckett wasn't exactly sure what she expected his reaction to that news would be, but it definitely wasn't the feel of warm lips on hers, which was what was happening now.

She knew she should push him away, or at least do something to discourage him, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not after breaking up with Josh because of him.

Instead of doing what she knew she should do, she did the opposite and leaned into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and pouring all the feelings she had had since they met into it.

When they finally separated, Castle looked scared for his life, but Beckett just looked very happy and content.

"Merry Christmas, Castle." He looked surprised at that but when she pulled him back down for round two, he didn't question it.

Later, they would both thank fate for giving them the chance to get together on Christmas. It was certainly a Christmas neither would forget.

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"Well, would ya look at that. Your plan worked out after all, and here I was thinking that ya were going to get us both killed." Gus looked away from the computer screen which had a perfect view of the happenings inside the elevator, and looked at his partner in crime who was currently leaning back in her chair with a satisfied smirk on her place.

"Of course my plan worked, it was only a matter of how long we would have to keep them locked in there. Now, why don't you make your way back down there and let them out, but walk slowly, okay? And while you are doing that, I'm going to just disappear like I was never here. Because if Beckett finds out what we did, you know what she will do to us..."

"Sure thing, I'll make sure they never find out."

Lanie smiled as she headed out of the precinct, extremely happy that all had gone according to plan.

_Maybe I should pretend to be 'fate' more often._

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**And now you probably realized why this story is called Christmas, Elevators, and Fate. Maybe I should have just called it Christmas, Elevators, and a Meddling Lanie?**

**Thanks for reading! That's the end of this one. So no begging me for more chapters, okay? If you want more fluff, keep an eye out for any one shots I post this month! **


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